Winters, an Irish protestant who flew a B-17 bomber across the Atlantic for Israel and helped sell the fledgling nation two other planes, served 18 months in jail for violating the 1939 Neutrality Act and a then-active arms embargo on Israel. He became only the second person ever to be granted a posthumous pardon after quite a bit of lobbying from the likes of Steven Spielberg and other friends of Israel.

But a tipster, who claims to have info from the Israeli prime minister's office, says all that pleading wasn't the reason Winters name was cleared: Bush didn't want to pardon Jonathan Pollard, a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy who's serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. "Israel wanted Jonathan Pollard released from prison. So Bush threw them a bone and pardoned a Zionist hero," says the tipster. Israel acknowledged that he was a spy in 1998, and has since been actively lobbying for his release. At this rate, he may get pardoned in 2046.